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Dream : Faculty : Material Design : Antonios Zavaliangos
Antonios Zavaliangos
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
NSF Career Award, 1996
Faculty web page
Particulate Processing of Pharmaceutical Powders
The process of designing new drugs has been accelerated in the last few years due to several scientific advances that facilitated the discovery of new chemicals and the development of efficient synthesis methods. The multitude of new active ingredients and the need for a fast transition to market has placed high pressure on the manufacturing of tablets. Dr. Zavaliangos in collaboration with Merck Inc & Co. has pursued the development of a science basis for the processing of pharmaceutical tablets. In the context of this work, he has developed phenomenological and micromechanical compaction models and associated mechanical testing procedures (Fig. 9). These tools allow optimization of tableting in terms of strength and drug availability upon dissolution in the body.
Example REU Project: A problem suitable for freshmen, is the development of particle packing algorithms that produce packing geometries which can be subsequently discretized by finite elements to study of the effects of particle shape, interparticle friction, and fragmentation [39]. The students will utilize geometrical concepts and develop computer algorithm for the generation of packing of complex shape particles in 3D. Physical experiments will complement the computational effort to verify the validity of the models.
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